He could go on—there is so so SO much more he could say—but he decides to leave it at that for now.
After a moment, Tess says, “Too bad my mom and me didn’t make it to New Mexico. I might have been enlightened by now.”
“It’s not about the specific place,” says Matthew, “it’s about getting away.”
“Yeah, well,” she says, “getting away is not such an option for some of us.”
He glances over. She’s kind of sunk in the seat now, looking straight ahead. Shit, did something he said upset her? She doesn’t look angry, more sort of… sullen.
“Well, I mean, I’m sure there are other ways too,” he offers.
“Look,” she says, “I don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything? ‘Cause I seriously appreciate you giving me a ride and all, even if you only did so because I used my wiles to like trick you—but I take just a tiny bit of issue or like some umbrage or something with people going all Gwyneth on me and telling me about all the amazing and incredibly expensive things that I simply must do. I thankfully go to a school—I hope I still go there, that is, following this lengthy unannounced leave of absence—but I go to a school where there’s a relative dearth of trust-fund babies. But the ones I do meet kind of chap my ass talking about the shit that I’ve just gotta try, telling me about their plans for the break, where they summer and all that. I summer at Old Navy, picking up as many doubles as I can so that I can actually have clothes and food when I go back to school in the fall.”
“But that’s exactly what I’m talking about!” says Matthew. “Those material things, those luxuries—the cars and the restaurants, the ski resorts, all of it—that’s not the answer. None of those things is going to leave you any more satisfied at the end of the day. It’s like the Buddha says—”
“Oh, please.” Tess scoffs. “The Buddha was a deadbeat dad. Dude walked out on his wife and kid.”
“Yeah… I guess… but he didn’t need any luxuries, was the point I was making.”
“Time and space,” says Tess, “are the ultimate luxuries. I share a one-bedroom apartment with my mom and whatever guy she might be hooking up with at the time. I work part-time throughout the school year. And that’s fine. I don’t go around feeling sorry for myself—I don’t have time for that. And I don’t begrudge you this ‘awakening’ that you’ve had—it’s great. Totally. I’m happy for you. But you might want to realize how fortunate you are to have had the opportunity to go after it in the first place. ‘Cause when you talk about this ‘being-ness’ at the heart of everything or whatever it was you said… it sounds to me more like the rosy glow of privilege. I’m sorry, I know I’m insulting you when you’re doing me a serious solid. And it’s rude and stupid and I should just shut up.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “I’m not easily offended.”
She laughs. “Welcome to the future, where enlightenment is just another accessory to slip inside your Louis Vuitton bag.” Then: “Have you read the Baghavad-Gita?”
“A little,” he says. “My dad’s really into it.”
“Yeah, well, I had to read it for this Civ course. And the beginning’s okay. I’m following it, thinking this is some decent advice. Insightful. Practical. But then it gets to the part about how this is why the caste system is so important, and I’m like—whoa! Hang on! How did we get here? It was like this big bait-and-switch. I’m reading what I think is this great spiritual text, and it turns out to be a piece of ancient Indian right-wing propaganda. Like it presents itself as spirituality, but it’s really just economics.”
“That’s interesting.”
“You’re offended, aren’t you? You totally hate me now.”
“No…”
“You totally like want to leave me on the side of the road.”
“No, no… not at all.”
It’s true. He doesn’t hate her. He’s not offended—not badly, at any rate—and he’s definitely lost the urge to kick her out of the car.
They drive on without talking, entering Connecticut. Tess connects her phone to the car’s Bluetooth and streams Vampire Weekend to the speakers as they glide along through the rolling hills of Route 15.
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Whole Story
Val knows that look. It’s the same look John gave her when they first met. It’s a look that says I’m available and hopes that you are too. There’s nothing creepy or aggressive about it—it’s not a leer, for God’s sake. When a man gives a woman that look, he’s just letting her know, gently. He’s laying a card on the table and seeing if she’ll pick it up.
Val turns away from the man’s gaze, to the jazz quartet playing in one corner of the room. She tries to spot the tune—something made famous by Charlie Parker, she thinks. She grabs her martini a bit too quickly from the bar. Some of the vodka sloshes over the rim of the glass, snaking down the sloped side and spilling onto her hand.
“How graceful,” she says, lifting her wet hand away from the glass.
“Uncouth Americans,” the man says, gliding over to her with a grin. “Next thing you know, you’ll be asking where the Hard Rock Café is.” His English is impeccable, the grammar and cadence perfect, with a wispy Mediterranean breeze in his pronunciation.
The year is 1998. Val is on a business trip to Paris. After five years spent making their home in Great Falls, overseeing additions of both the architectural and human variety, she was struck one day with an urgent desire to return to work. Remodeling and taking the boys to their various infant/toddler art and music classes just wasn’t doing it for her. She had an itch, a yearning for purpose—or perhaps for purpose’s wicked cousin, prestige—that parenting and the occasional board meeting with the Central Maine Arts Alliance couldn’t satisfy.
So one afternoon that summer, she asked the housekeeper to look after the boys while she made a few calls to some old associates in Boston. She had been working her way into the middle echelons of the city’s publishing industry before their move to Maine, and some of her former colleagues were well established in the business at this point.
Two weeks later, having exploited her connections and tested her guile to the utmost, Val was shaking hands with the regional manager of a mid-sized publishing house, agreeing to act on a trial basis as a liaison to their nascent French office. (Along with padding the gaps in her résumé, she had perhaps overstated her facility with the language.) That fall, having supplemented her wardrobe with a dozen business suits and stuffed as many Rosetta Stone lessons as she could into her hungry brain, Val was on her way to Paris. Matthew and Jacob would be cared for by a live-in nanny during her time away, John being too busy with both his practice and Safeguard Industries’ rapid expansion to be of much use at home.
Now here she is, her first major meeting with the Parisians having descended into confusion—owing, she suspects, to her difficulty understanding the nuances of French irony—allowing herself to fall into an easy rapport with a fellow traveler at the bar of a five-star hotel overlooking the Rue de la Pompe.
A necktie-sporting bartender appears with a hand towel, but the man waves him away. The man winks (it’s unclear whether it’s to her, the bartender, or both) and dries her hand with his own napkin. His nails are longish and meticulously trimmed, possibly manicured. John has always kept his nails short. When they were dating, this had been the result of incessant biting and tearing; then when he’d gone into obstetrics, he’d decided to keep them short for practical reasons.
Val had always thought that a man ought to keep his nails short. Her father’s were always short, though she had never once seen him clip or bite them. (Grooming in the Muldoon house happened behind closed doors.) Long nails have always seemed to her a trifle effeminate, or at least too much trouble for a man to maintain (a man, that is, who has his priorities straight). But there’s nothing effete, nothing womanly or affected, about this man’s nails, or his fingers for that matter, his hands, arms, or anything about him—the four-piece bespoke suit, the Errol Flynn hairdo, the Roman no
se, the slightly bitter balsamic scent rising from his skin. It is all of a piece. As if he were born to this. He’s not even handsome, exactly, but he carries himself with such assurance and ease that it’s almost impossible not to be drawn to him.
Twenty minutes later, they’ve move to a booth. Val notices that the positions of three black-suited men in the lounge—all of them drinking club soda—have shifted as well, forming a triangular buffer around her and her drinking companion.
His name, she has learned, is Hassan. He hails from a small Middle Eastern country she is only vaguely aware of. He was educated in Spain and speaks seven languages—all of them, she is sure, with that same intoxicating inflection. He demurs when she asks him what he does for a living (“I am in the family business.” “And what business would that be?” “… Management, you might say. Though these days it feels more like entertainment.”), and Val begins to draw up a mental list of professions that would warrant a three-man security detail.
The subject turns to her occupation. He asks her what inspired her to go back to work after such a lengthy break.
“I didn’t want to be that kind of woman,” she says.
“What kind of woman?”
“Oh, you know, the kind who define themselves by their children’s accomplishments, carting them from this activity to that one in their luxury SUVs and in the process losing any sense of individual identity they might have had.”
Hassan smiles. “I think this may be more of a concern in America than it is in my country.”
“It’s disgusting,” she says. “I mean, if I were religious or like a Republican, then maybe it would seem like exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. And my kids are great—don’t get me wrong, I love my family. It’s just not what I set out to do. And now I’m beset by guilt coming from both sides, feeling like I’m a totally inadequate mother one minute, a totally inadequate feminist the next.”
He nods. “I do know something about the weight of expectations. The boxes in which society puts one.”
“Exactly.” She discovers that her hand is on his. She removes it, blushing. “I have nothing to complain about, though. It’s not like I’m some oppressed nineteenth-century housewife.”
“Or wearing a hijab.”
“Or that. No one forced me to give up my career. Or to have children. My boys are adopted—it’s not like it was an accident, or a surprise even.”
“You do not have your own children?” A pause. “I’m sorry, that was an indelicate question.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s actually refreshing to have someone ask so directly. I’m used to people tying their tongues in knots, trying to figure out how to ask why my children don’t look anything like me—or each other.”
With a third round materializing before them, they move away from the topic of Val’s dissatisfactions. Hassan tells her everything she simply must see in Paris, with seemingly no regard for expense, an endorsement for a 500-franc-a-plate restaurant following without transition a recommendation for a seedy sangria bar near the Palais de Luxembourg.
He tells her about the Viaduc des Arts, a line of boutiques where she will be sure to find any gifts she might want to bring home.
“It can be difficult to locate,” he says, “but I would be glad to show you.”
Now his hand is on hers, and he gives no sign that he means to withdraw it. She smiles. “That would be nice.”
The quartet plays. The security guards sip their sodas implacably, never so much as glancing at the two of them. Val feels the vodka working on her now. She knows she’ll have another. She just doesn’t know—giddy as she is with the drinks and her distance from home—whether it’ll be here or in Hassan’s hotel room.
9:47 p.m.
Stanley sets a pen and paper on the desk. Val sits there, staring straight ahead, refusing to pick up either of them, refusing to open her mouth, refusing even to look at the items. She’s not going to give these guys another thing. Not one. Damn. Thing.
Stanley shifts in his seat, settling in. He looks at her, his brown eyes warm and child-like, their softness incongruous with his imposing frame.
“I really need you to answer these questions for me. Would you please just…” Val looks off to the side, ignoring his request. He sighs. “Look,” he says, softly, imploring, “it’s pretty simple what I’m asking you to do, all right? It’s very straightforward.”
Val says nothing, does nothing. Stanley leans in closer to her.
“Listen,” he says, looking toward the door, then back at her, “Dresden says we need answers to at least two out of three questions, or else the results are invalid. And if the results are invalid… well, I don’t know what’ll happen exactly, but I’m sure it won’t be good. So just please, answer the questions. It’s nothing too personal or embarrassing, nothing like that. And as long as you answer at least two-out-of-three and they’re the same answers as your husband, then nothing bad will happen. Okay? So can we do that? Please?”
Val thinks. The guy is practically telling her that she doesn’t need to fully comply with his request—he’s almost begging her not to comply. She has been wondering if he’s as dumb as he looks; now she’s got her answer. She turns to face him. “How many questions are there, Stanley?”
His eyes widen, and he fumbles with the paper in his hands.
“Umm… twenty-six, I think. Yeah, twenty-six.”
“All right, Stanley,” she says, “I’ll answer your questions.”
She’s saying his name as much as she can, a trick she read in Psychology Today. The more familiar they feel, the more difficult it will be for him to hurt her.
Twenty-six questions. Two-thirds accuracy. That means she must answer seventeen or eighteen of the questions. She can avoid giving the information that might be most useful to them while filling her quota with useless facts. This won’t be giving them anything.
Item 1: John’s social security number—Oh, gosh, she can’t remember.
Item 4: John’s mother’s maiden name—You know, she isn’t one hundred percent sure about that one either. Best not to answer.
Item 16: John’s kindergarten teacher—That’s easy. Mrs. Harrison. Val has catalogued a lot of random details of John’s biography over the years. No harm in giving them this.
Item 18: John’s first sports coach—Honestly, no idea.
When they reach the end of the questionnaire, Val scans the page and sees that she has filled in only sixteen answers. She asks him to repeat number twelve—John’s favorite sports team—and writes down the answer: The Boston Celtics. This should do.
She hands Stanley the page, smiling politely, the impulse to be obliging and friendly when completing a task deeply ingrained in her. Her defiance has abated—for now at least—and Val has returned to her usual, helpful self. The good Southern girl. Her parents’ daughter.
Stanley gazes at the sheet blankly, looking almost confused, like a child who makes a fuss out of getting a toy and then doesn’t know what to do with it. He stands up and goes out of the room, telling her to wait there (as if she were going anywhere).
There are voices in the hallway, hushed but agitated. Dresden hollers something.
The door swings open and Stanley comes back into the room, red-faced and upset. A vein on his temple throbs angrily, causing the stitches to rise and fall. He doesn’t look mad, though—he looks worried, almost frightened.
He holds up the sheet of paper with her answers.
“Are you sure about all of these?”
Val blinks. “Shall I look them over again?”
“Yeah,” he says, handing her the page. “Make sure everything’s right. Anything’s not right, we got a problem.”
She gives the page a cursory scan, but there’s really no point. She knows the answers are right. Val was never the most brilliant student, but she was brought up to believe that effectiveness is a more valuable trait than talent. And effectiveness can be learned. What goddamn good is talent, her father would ask, if
it doesn’t yield results? To that end, Val trained herself at a young age never to make a mistake on a test. If she knows the answer, it will appear in full and without error. She never guesses. Guessing feels dirty to her, tainting the purity of the answers she does know.
So what does this mean? Her answers are correct, she’s sure of it. And the man compared them with John’s. Could John have gotten something wrong? Or might he have intentionally tried to deceive them?
Yeah, right. She won’t even entertain the possibility. After a lifetime of irritating her with his excessive cautiousness, to make such a gamble now, at the worst possible moment? There’s no way her husband would do something so reckless and risky.
No… the men are bluffing, trying to draw out a confession of any false answers. That’s how guys like this operate.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” she says, shaking her head. “Everything I wrote is correct. I’m sure of it.”
She hands the page back to him.
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